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Flipped on the TV this morning to GMA on ABC. The big news? The new polls on President elect’s handling of the transition. It was 40% on a graph comparing a half dozen other presidential transitions. Then the percent was higher for the two other polling questions on fixing the economy and fighting terrorism, both around 60%. Where do they get these? After the election and the exit poll debacle of all three major networks, and maybe four, how can anyone believe any poll results which are announced?
Back in the 1990s, George Stephanopoulos and James Carville in more than one documentary about the Clinton campaign and era, explain how they handled a problem by explaining, “How are we going to spin this.” Perhaps that was where the inception for the new TV show “SPIN CITY” with Michael J. Fox. 1996 – 2002
Is it all a matter of degree? While I have had a smattering of college classes in mass communication, political science, some history, oh, and don’t forget statistics ……several things come to mind. I am forced to dig up my old history by Garraty about Horace Greely and the 1860s press, Yellow Journalism and turn of 1900’s century Muck raking Press. Samuel Clemens comes to mind and his Virginia City journalism days in Roughing It make one wonder about truth in the press. Wasn’t there a raved about movie in early 1940s? Citizen Kane movie was about the negative influence of a press publisher, Supposedly about William Randolph Hearst who also supposedly ruined or sidetracked the career of Orsen Welles because of the film.
Then came TV and 1950s Madison Avenue, and the power of TV in the Nixon – Kennedy debate. It wasn’t even ten years after the 1960 election that CBS was spinning the false debacle of the 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam.
I am not believing much in polls these days, exit polls or any others. No matter how you “skew the data.”
But a question still persists. At what point is SPIN turned into a LIE?

Interesting stuff this morning. On the news, there was a release of actor’s video encouraging the 2016 electors to vote their conscience, as their view of the US Constitution. Also the Intelligence community refusing to respond to a Congressional request for a closed door Intelligence Committee briefing on hacking. Also the news of the 2013 hacking of Yahoo. On top of that a short mention of hacking pointing to Turkey not Russia.

On the first point, there was also a brief mention that NOBODY is listening to or watching the major media. On the second point, the actors are asking the electors to ignore the will of the people in their respective states. The intel community is, well, who the hell knows, right? But the Yahoo thing hits closer to home. But, why released this now, three years later? Now, we don’t have a Yahoo account per se, but have AT&T.net, which uses Yahoo, so I suppose that means us. We have been hacked in the past. Yes, and our Facebook page also.

The email hacking is interesting because here is a history of our hacking which seems to coincide with the 2013 thing: January 7, 2013, September 18, 2014, April 17, 2015, June 30, 2016, December 6, 2016. I cannot remember the dates of the two Facebook hackings, but have received many phishing requests from hacked friend sites.

The Turkey location piece did ring a bell also. Our VISA was hacked last February and it was from a source in Instanbul, Turkey. So, yeah, that news was interesting, personally. Our VISA was also hacked again this past October from a store in Stanislaus County which is ninety minutes north. We have no control of protecting ourselves from institutional or business systems like Home Depot, VISA, and Target.

Regarding major news media? I quit watching them as a source years ago. But, that’s just me, one guy.

Today’s interview was the second time for the novel PAPPY BUTLER & HIS ZERO TIME THEORY on Central Valley Talk studio in Fresno, California. It ran longer than planned as two other guests in the hour did not show. Besides the talk about the Pappy Butler story for any new viewers, I told a little bit more about Pappy’s theory. The other thing mentioned was the upcoming sequel to THE DOC novel, with answers to loose ends from that book. Called DELETE DOC, it is scheduled for release in May or June. There is no cover design yet. There is more on …….. Enough. The interview is on YOUTUBE at:

Yeah. Well, as you can see from the photo, I’ve been at it a while. While I’ve always thought of the business side of being a published author [1st book in December 2005], so much has evolved in the print industry and all digital formats. Borders hadn’t closed yet, back then, and I thought they might have stayed longer as they had this electronic connection with Amazon. There was still one B. Dalton store, and I had plans to do a signing event there, and it closed very quickly in 2007.
Two sites I came across had me changing gears, even though I was already trying to practice some things over the past year. Last year was when I was learning about my fifth cousin’s 50,000 sales of his cross genre science-fiction and fantasy series. He was heavily reviewed and in one of hottest genres ever, both issues where my books are lacking. But, that’s all right, I understand all that.

Generally, we all have been aware of the term KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE, but the larger problem is REACHING YOUR AUDIENCE. Some of the things may have been touched on others, but one item was really eye-opening about the point of pitching “hooks” instead of genres. I realized when I am at a signing event and a visitor asks about the book, I begin with a hook statement immediately, without knowing their interest quite. So, yeah, it made sense, and there is more there.
What do you think?

The interview is very short on CENTRALValleytalk.com and the Artists and Authors Show is fairly new in their programming, as it was added in three or four months ago. While there are three others interviewed during the hour, the link below on YouTube is their edited version of only my portion.

I don’t think any of us are safe, in this digital age. I mean, I’m sick of all the scare ads, for home security alarms, “lifelock” and others, Can Lifelock be hacked? Probably. And they say protect your social security number. Why? If it, your number is stolen, Social Security won’t give you a new number like a credit card. I’ve been hacked on Facebook, email, and once at our bank from a check we wrote a grocery store. I lost my wallet last year. It’s my own fault. I was in a rush. Pretty sure it was never picked up from where I last had it, at Savemart parking lot. I think it was dropped from my vehicle on HWY 99 between Fresno and Visalia. It had my Medicare cards. The Social Security number IS your medicare number. I canceled all gas cards, bank accounts, and one credit card. It was a mess. But there was nothing to do about the Medicare card.
So, as I thought about it, That number is on all my medical stuff, at several doctors offices, hospital medical records, medical lab locations. Are all the medical employees bonded hires? If any medical worker, office staff, is in financial trouble, can they sell social security numbers that have come across their desks? Plus, there is the HIPPA laws that insured medical privacy, but now, because of the Affordable Healthcare Act, that information has to be sent to the government. Government data bases have been hacked. You have no electronic privacy.
There’s more. Later.

A few months ago, or was it years now, there was a local restaurant owner who put a sign on his business front. It was a rude comment to the President – for you news crawler fans otherwise called POTUS. His sign was in protest of the President’s news conference comments about the need for the government, in the matter of businesses and public utilities infrastructure. With regard to business owners, it was said, “you didn’t build it.” Meaning that the business owner didn’t build it, the government helped because of the highways and roads, and such.
Locally, it became a news item on TV, and then on a local legislator’s Facebook page. I agreed with the business owner, rude or not, and jumped into the fray on the Facebook site. That exchange got nowhere and degenerated into an economic discussion on gross national product figures. I took another step later, and blogged about all of this on another site, along with some other points. It went out, published on that site, but I had a comment from the site host owner advising me, “don’t be a demagogue.”
Frankly, I really didn’t think that I was that strong in my opinion. I may have been a touch dogmatic , but a demagogue? I wasn’t running for any office. I was always going to comment back to the chap, but never did. It occurred to me that it would not have mattered, as it was a political and government view which differed in the purpose and powers of government control. They read my view or comments, and didn’t like it, or didn’t agree with me.
It reminded me, still later, of when I was in another discussion, on a group email exchange. It had to do with the water situation in central California this year. The group, mostly ranchers and farmers or connected to agribusiness, were eloquent about the gripe that legislators and state leaders had reneged on promises of which crops would be allowed to be preserved. Mixed in with this was the discussion on vegetarians, beef production, and others, and how to be civil with the arguments. Apparently, almonds were now discussed as a crop that used to be preserved as now a crop that had to be deleted. It was asked by one fellow, “How can we reason with those leaders to understand these things?”
I emailed back an answer. And the fellow replied, “Can we just write them off and cut them loose from our efforts?” It was something like that.
My answer was, “Well, yeah. How can you convince a group of vegetarians who want to destroy the world’s greatest source of plant protein. They’re idiots.”
There was no reply from that person. He may have been a vegetarian. One other in the group made a positive reply, but I have not heard from them since. I think I may have been dropped from the group. I guess I wasn’t diplomatic in my, uh ………….. expression.

Today this painting is presented to commemorate the November 30, 1864 Battle of Franklin, Tennessee. Buried in history are the stories of so many and their valor on the Carter farm. As this is not meant to be a lengthy history with this posting, here is a poem about it too.